The Red Brick Cellars: A Tolosa Mystery Read Online Free

any shopping, just stopped to talk to shoppers and vendors alike. Everybody loved him and loved reading about him.
    Her boss at le Midi Républicain , the local newspaper, made sure to include at least one article on one of the members of the Saint-Blancat family every day. Catherine only very recently managed to extricate herself from writing those articles. She was finally allowed to concentrate on the actual politics of the city, to possibly make a difference for once. Then she went and made one little mistake and her boss told her to stay away from the story around the mayor’s death. The most interesting story since Mohammed Merah, at the very least, and she was banned.
    Catherine was about to do something about that situation. She decided that the topmost label on the intercom might possibly say “Diatta” and pressed the button. The night before, Catherine had spent three hours trawling the Canal du Midi and talking to all the prostitutes. She was determined to talk to the woman who discovered the mayor’s body, no matter how unreliable that clown police officer considered her. An African girl of about twenty finally said she knew the woman. Mademoiselle Diatta hadn’t been feeling well since the discovery of the bodies and was not working that night. After some prodding and pleading, Catherine had obtained her address.
    Static sounded through the intercom, then the door buzzed open. Catherine pushed inside and took a relieved breath of the cool air as her eyes adjusted to the long, dark corridor she found herself in. Toward the back of the house, another door opened to a back yard, and before that, a staircase with stone steps so used there were indentations in the center led up to the left. Assuming the top spot on the intercom meant an apartment on the top floor, Catherine started climbing. Most of these old houses in the city center didn’t have an elevator—there was no room for it.
    The staircase turned up to the next floor, then another one took her yet farther up. The sun streaming in through windows at the end of the corridor on each landing was enough to see by. She had the impression it was cooler in the dark, which was always a godsend at the end of a long, hot summer in South-Western France.
    The second floor appeared to be the last one. There were four doors, and none of them had a name-tag. As Catherine considered the possibility of knocking on the first one, it opened. A stunning African girl peeked out. One of the prostitutes Catherine talked to had said the girl was from Senegal. “ Qui êtes vous? ” she said in a honeyed voice.
    Catherine put on a reassuring smile and answered the question. “My name is Catherine Marty. I work at le Midi Républicain . I’m working on an article about the mayor’s death and would very much like to talk to you about what you saw.”
    Mademoiselle Diatta studied Catherine for several seconds before replying. “I already said everything to the police. They didn’t believe me. You any better?” Her stance gave away her fatigue. Bloodshot eyes stared out. They weren’t openly hostile. Simply…resigned.
    Catherine looked the woman in the eyes. “I won’t know if I believe you until I hear your story,” she said. “If you don’t want your name in the paper, that’s not an issue. You can be a nameless witness.”
    Mademoiselle Diatta huffed a mirthless laugh. “I’m the only witness. It won’t take a genius to figure out who you talked to.” She looked Catherine up and down once, then turned and walked back into her apartment, leaving the door open.
    Catherine stepped inside and closed the door behind her.
    The young woman had apparently not cleaned or tidied much over the last few days by the look of the clothes and empty pizza-boxes strewn about on all surfaces. It was probably due to stress, Catherine thought, for underneath, the place was squeaky clean. And beautiful. A short hallway with three doors opened on a living room with a smart red and